❝ i'm chaos walking . . . ❞
❝ then i'll walk with you.❞
「 Liliana Granger knew chaos like the back of her hand.
It confronted her, challenging her to find calm wherever she could.
But some days...
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❝ Well, what are friends for? ❞
⋅☾☼☽⋅
Liliana awoke the next morning to a dull and cloudy sky. It matched her mood perfectly. As she got dressed, her mind wandered back to her conversation with Harry from hours earlier. He had apologized to her, owned up to making the wrong call when it came to the duel Malfoy had set up, but she had snubbed it. Now that she wasn't seeing red, she wished she hadn't.
She had let her emotions take control, the one thing Professor McGonagall had told her from the start she had to be careful of as a legilimens. Her stomach twisted in knots at the reminder she had failed to remember.
Tossing her satchel over her shoulder, she headed down to the common room. When she reached the bottom of the girls' staircase, the knots tightened to the point of breathlessness — Harry was standing across from her, his demeanor as uncomfortable as hers. Slowly and awkwardly, they closed the distance between themselves.
"Hey," he said, voice small.
Liliana tugged on the strap of her satchel. "Hey."
"So —"
"Look —"
They both paused. The corners of Liliana's mouth lifted a bit.
"Do you wanna go first?" Harry asked.
"Unless you want to?" she said. He shook his head. "Right. Okay. Well — I'mreallysorryaboutlastnight."
"What?" Harry said, brows scrunched at her word salad.
Liliana took a deep breath, her cheeks hot and red. "I'm really sorry about last night. I was... a total prat."
Harry stared at her, his silence starting to cross the line from awkward to unbarable. But then, with a small smirk on his lips, he said, "It's water under the bridge."
Liliana rolled her eyes, but a laugh rumbled in her throat as dimples pressed into her cheeks. Harry's smirk turned into a smile then.
"I was a real tosser too," he said when their amusement died down.
"A massive one," she agreed with a serious nod.
"Ouch," he said, putting a hand to his heart as though her words had struck deep.
Liliana laughed at his dramatics and he smiled a bit. But it weakened as Hermione came down the stairs, her attitude a complete turn around from his. He acknowledged her presence with a small wave. She ignored him.
"So breakfast?" Hermione asked her sister.
Liliana looked between her and Harry. "Er... yeah."
The walk to the Great Hall was silent between the sisters. Liliana could tell that Hermione was upset with her; when you've spent as much time with someone as she had with Hermione, you started to pick up on the little cues. Based on the narrowness of her eyes and the way her chin was tilted upward, Hermione was nearing a level-two outburst.
